The Buckminster Fuller Institute
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is dedicated to accelerating the development and deployment of solutions which radically advance human well being and the health of our planet's ecosystems. We aim to deeply influence the ascendance of a new generation of design-science pioneers who are leading the creation of an abundant and restorative world economy that benefits all humanity.
Our programs combine unique insight into global trends and local needs with a comprehensive approach to design. We encourage participants to conceive and apply transformative strategies based on a crucial synthesis of whole systems thinking, Nature's fundamental principles, and an ethically driven worldview.
By facilitating convergence across the disciplines of art, science, design and technology, our work extends the profoundly relevant legacy of R. Buckminster Fuller. In this way, we strive to catalyze the collective intelligence required to fully address the unprecedented challenges before us.
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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTE
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is a 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1983 and inspired by the ideas and discoveries pioneered by the late R. Buckminster Fuller. BFI's constituency crosses disciplinary boundaries and includes people working in the fields of art, architecture, design, education, engineering, information technology, economics, the environment, mathematics, planning, science, and systems theory.
Accomplishment Highlights:
- Produced and recorded a series of all-day public presentations by Buckminster Fuller to over 5,000 in Los Angeles.
- Served as custodians for the Fuller Archive for 16 years, providing access to scholars and researchers, Fuller's exhaustive collection of papers and artifacts.
- Co-produced and provided research for multiple exhibitions from the Fuller Archive, including a 4,000 sq. ft. exhibition that traveled to Europe and Japan for 3 years.
- Co-produced an American Master's film for PBS on Buckminster Fuller, Thinking Out Loud.
- For 24 years, serving the international network of Fuller-inspired innovators through the maintenance of a comprehensive Information Clearinghouse on R.B Fuller, including a detailed inventory of the practices and principles informing Fuller's approach to design innovation; articles featuring contemporary applications of Fuller's approach published in BFI's newsletter, monthly e-bulletin, web-site, and on-line books; audio and video archives; and Dymaxion Artifacts, BFI's online store, featuring educational tools.
- Developed and delivered for Pacific Bell Corporation the Dymaxion Laboratory college accredited course on the principles of breakthrough design strategies, to over 2,000 employees.
- Conceived and developed the EARTHscope™ online geo-story-telling tool and EARTHscope™ Library.
- In 2003 raised seed funding for an emergency shelter pilot project that sent 25 Emergency Shelter units to relief organizations in Jordan, Mexico and Germany. In 2005 raised funding to send two emergency shelters to Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina.
- Produced and published numerous articles papers, booklets and maps including three versions of the Dymaxion map and two versions of the Fuller Projection Dymaxion Fold-up Globe.
- In 2005 developed a state-of-the art fully interactive website, BFI.org as a community networking and resource center.
- In 2005, developed a flagship program, Design Science Lab, teaching the comprehensive and anticipatory problem solving methodology of Buckminster Fuller.
In 2004, the Institute moved from Sebastopol, California to Brooklyn, New York. The move capped an intensive strategic planning process in which the organization refined its mission, streamlined its operational systems, and added several new members to its Board of Directors. The move to New York situated BFI at a major urban crossroads with access to leading universities, innovative secondary schools, unparalleled cultural centers and an international community of leading edge architects, artists, designers, engineers, planners and other thinkers. This aspect of the strategy has been critical in accelerating collaborations within concerned and talented communities in academia, business, government and nonprofit sectors.
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Matt Barron ⋅ Program Manager
718 290 9283 ⋅ contact
Elizabeth Thompson ⋅ Executive Director
718 290 9285 ⋅ contact
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Mark Beam, was born in Omaha, Nebraska and now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico. In between he has lived and worked in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. Mark's interests lie in Social Capital, Collective Intelligence, Art & Technology, Pattern Recognition, Spatial Intelligence and Mapping, and his work merges business, art, entertainment, media and design worlds. Mark is a longtime Board Member of the Leonardo Journal and is currently involved in helping to raise capital for an investment fund of GoodCapital that will invest in companies and non-profit social enterprises. |
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Kirk Bergstrom, Dr. Bergstrom is founder and President of WorldLink Foundation. In this capacity, he has directed special projects for such clients as the United Nations, State of the World Forum, PBS, Walt Disney Imagineering, and Tech Museum of Innovation. A filmmaker and social entrepreneur, Kirk has developed and produced award-winning television, interactive multimedia, websites, museum exhibits, and educational curricula. He recently wrote and directed the PBS special Power Shift, a half-hour program on energy and sustainability. He also directed and produced Spaceship Earth: Our Global Environment, winner of two national Emmy Awards. In 1995, Kirk produced A Place to Stand, the official global television program for the UN’s 50th Anniversary. |
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Joe Clinton, is a practicing Design Scientist of more than forty years. His guiding philosophy: "All that is, is energy, and all that is matter is the manifestation of energy, I seek to find the order in the manifestation." |
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Neal Katz, CPA, BFI President as of January 2006, Treasurer since 1995 and board member since 1994. Neal is the CEO and Managing Shareholder of the accounting firm Katz Cassidy which has been in practice since 1959. Katz Cassidy is a four shareholder firm in West Los Angeles, California. |
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Lynette Kessler, is an accomplished dancer, choreographer, and media artist with a MFA in dance from the University of Michigan and a BFA in dance from York University in Toronto, her innovative collaborations and dances for the screen have been shown in film festivals worldwide. She has received numerous awards including an Alden B. Dow Creativity Fellowship and an artist residency at the prestigious Headlands Center for the Arts. Lynette was a founding member of the Media & Dance Network International and is a guest-lecturer at UCLA, UC Irvine, and California Institute for the Arts. Funding for DCW comes from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Commission on the Arts, The Annenberg Foundation, the Lloyd E. Rigler and Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation and the Mortimer Levitt Foundation. She joined the Board of Directors of the Buckminster Fuller Institute in January 2008.
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Jonathan Marvel, Co-Principal (with Rob Rogers), Rogers Marvel Architects (RMA). RMA is a multidisciplinary practice of 45 architects, landscape architects, urban designers, preservationists, and product designers, working on a wide range of projects including museums, schools, and public spaces. A small satellite office in Cody, Wyoming focuses on houses and land planning. Jonathan and Rob also co-founded TRUCK Product Architecture (furniture and homewares for modern living) and Rock12 Security Architecture (brings design to streetscape elements). Rogers Marvel’s NOGO streetscape elements were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in early 2007. In conjunction with BKLYN Designs and ICFF Connected events in May 2006, Jonathan co-curated blockparty, an installation that features Brooklyn-based designers, artists, furniture makers and craftspeople and completely inhabits one of the fourteen State Street Townhouses designed by RMA, now in construction. Other recent projects include rooftop residences, streetscapes security around the New York Stock Exchange and the World Financial Center, headquarters and worldwide retail stores for Kate Spade and Theory, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Stephen Gaynor School and Ballet Hispanico on the Upper West Side, and the South Fork Museum of Natural History on Long Island, and a New York Public Library in Soho. On the boards are a 50 story tower in lower Manhattan, a nine acre water front park in the Bronx, and a school/museum for the Pfizer Corporation in the original Charles Pfizer laboratory in Williamsburg. |
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Lucilla Marvel, AICP, PPL, has more than 30 years of experience in urban and social planning, housing and community development in Puerto Rico. Since establishing Taller de Planificacia's Social (Social Planning Workshop), a consulting firm, in 1973, she has worked with community organizations, private entities, and city and state governments in the preparation of needs analysis, social sector studies, housing plans, and strategic plans. Ms. Marvel co-founded the non- profit Puerto Rico Housing Network in 1996. She is also a member of the Board for the Center for the New Economy, a recently created independent think tank in Puerto Rico and the Chana and Samuel Levis Foundation. |
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David McConville, is a media artist and researcher based in Asheville, NC. He is co-founder of The Elumenati, a full service design and engineering firm specializing in the development of immersive visualization environments inspired by Fuller's Geoscope. McConville is founder of the Media Arts Project, an advisory board member of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and is currently a PhD candidate in the Planetary Collegium. He worked closely with the BFI to organize the first regional Design Science Lab in 2006 and continues to collaborate with numerous community initiatives to develop systems-oriented solutions to energy, environmental, and educational challenges. |
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Shoji Sadao, Executive Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, Inc. from 1991-2003, architect Shoji Sadao collaborated with both R.Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi on many important projects. Sadao met Fuller while studying architecture at Cornell University, and it was Fuller who introduced him to Noguchi. Shoji Sadao began working with Fuller in 1954, and in 1965 formed Fuller and Sadao, P.C., whose first project was the large geodesic dome for the U.S. Pavilion at EXPO 67 in Montreal. |
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Allegra Fuller Snyder, Founder, and first President, now Chairwoman of the Board of Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, Allegra Fuller Snyder, is Bucky’s only living child. She is also Professor Emerita of Dance and Dance Ethnology, UCLA; 1992 American Dance Guild Honoree of the Year; former Chair of the Department of Dance; and founding Coordinator of the World Arts and Cultures Program. She has been on the Dance Faculty at Cal Arts as well as Professor of Performance Studies at New York University, and Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey, Guildford, England.
She began her career as a performer and choreographer and has been concerned with the relation of dance to film since the late 1940s. She has made several prize winning documentary films on dance. She has done dance research around the world, was the recipient of several Fulbright Scholarships. Among many special projects Snyder was a Core Consultant on the PBS series DANCING for WNET/Channel 13. Recently returning to performance Jennifer Fisher of the LA times said of her in "Spirit Dances 6: Inspired by Isadora," "She was a haiku and an epic." |
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Jaime Snyder, BFI Executive Committee Member; Co-Founder of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and its former Executive Director. Producer, director and writer of educational media. His film projects include: Executive Producer for the PBS American Masters’ Special Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud; Pablo Casals’: A Cry for Peace; Producer-Director of the award-winning short film Modeling the Universe; and Co-Director of the film Reflections: Buckminster Fuller, winner of the CINE Golden Eagle Award. He developed a series of multi-media educational programs for BFI entitled the Dymaxion™ Laboratory. He is also a singer-songwriter. As Fuller’s grandson he studied and worked with Fuller until his passing in 1983. |
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Thomas Zung, Architect, former partner of Fuller and BFI board member since1984. Thomas greatly contributes to educational projects at a multitude of colleges and universities and has been instrumental in the set up and take down of the exhibit ‘Buckminster Fuller: Your Private Sky’ that toured Europe and Japan. He has also edited the recent book Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for the New Milllennium. Thomas Zung is a founding trustee of BFI and responsible for the US postage stamp issue for R. Buckminster Fuller during 2004. |
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